


Endless Night

by TigerOfTheTundra



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Contemplative, i will hold that to my dying day, just let shiro and the black lion acknowledge their bond pls, just let shiro sleep pls, kind of?, or not thinking as the case may be, s7 fix, shiro thinking, takes place in season 7, thats all i want, they're still bonded, tho really krolia's only briefly in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-07 09:25:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15905487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerOfTheTundra/pseuds/TigerOfTheTundra
Summary: Shiro can't sleep, and so he seeks an old friend to settle his worried mind





	Endless Night

Shiro couldn’t sleep. This in and of itself wasn’t unusual--he often couldn’t sleep on the Castle of Lions, and after being brought back from Black’s consciousness, he’d done little more than sleep while they flew. But just when he’d adjusted to the routine of space travel, they’d stopped on a planet to spend the night, and… he could not fall asleep.

  
He wasn’t the only one. Most of the team lay sprawled about on makeshift beds about the dying campfire, curled under blankets or sprawled halfway onto the cave floor. Coran mumbled something incoherent into his pillow, and even perpetual night-owl Pidge lay face down on her screen. The only person still awake was Krolia--Keith’s mother. She sat beside Keith, watching the shelter entrance and absentmindedly smoothing her son’s hair. When she saw Shiro awake, she didn’t look surprised.

  
“I can keep watch if you like,” he offered, unsure why he felt embarrassed. Like he’d been caught doing something, but who could blame him for having trouble sleeping?

  
“No need,” she said. “Pidge put up a perimeter monitor.”

  
“Ah.” Shiro had wondered why she had stayed up, then, but knew he had no room to point fingers. She leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes, after a moment.Shiro lay back down, but he still found no rest. He didn’t even have anything in particular on his mind, just… he couldn’t sleep. That more than anything bothered him, making him feel more awake, more restless. With a defeated sigh, he slipped out of bed and to the cavern entrance. They’d picked a mostly uninhabited area, a barren dry landscape orbiting a binary sun. Breathable air, though it had a sharp smell. Something he’d thought was chemical, if he’d smelled it back on Earth.

  
Earth. Maybe that was keeping him up. The thought of returning. He pulled the blanket around his shoulders tighter, shivering in the chill of the violet night. If he couldn’t sleep, he might as well…. He might…. His usual coping mechanism wouldn’t be much help without anything he could do, he thought wryly. For a while the cold tang of the air, the expanse of alien rock sculptures, that was enough to distract him. One of the sculptures looked like it was sprouting leaves. Maybe it was a tree? Or here, the line between rock and tree could be different; they were still on an alien planet after all. Shiro wandered over, glad of something to focus on, but he found himself at the foot of the Black Lion instead. He couldn't bring himself to feel surprised.

  
“Hey,” he said, putting his hand on her front foot. The blanket fell from his shoulders without his holding onto it, and he shivered, but he didn't mind. The Black Lion's presence resonated in his core like a familiar hum, a welcome memory. She lowered her head and opened her mouth for him.

  
“I miss you too,” he murmured. But he hesitated a moment--he didn't want to worry the team by vanishing again--before he stepped up.

 

 

The cockpit felt as it always did: calm, focusing, safe. He ran his hand over the panels beside the pilot's chair. One by one they glowed under his fingertips. A soft offer. An open offer.  
“No,” Shiro murmured. “They just settled into their lions like this. They…” His hand strayed to the controls, to the helm. He couldn’t bring himself to sit in the pilot’s chair, even though he knew Black would always leave it open to him. “Not yet,” he said, “not now.” They had to get to Earth first, and Keith…

  
Shiro couldn’t take the leadership from Keith. That unquestionable belonging. Goodness knew he had clung to that, to his place on this team, when they first came together. He found his way to the back of the cockpit and sat down, leaned himself against the back of the pilot’s chair, shivered a bit against the cool metal floor.

  
“Things were pretty different then, huh?” he mused, closing his eyes. “None of us had any idea what we were getting into.” The feeling from Black rumbled with agreement, amusement, contented thought. She seemed so much quieter out here, in the physical world. The ‘real’ world? A real world? Or, it could be because he wasn’t her paladin, he thought. The air seemed to grow heavy and tense, the charge of an oncoming storm.

  
“Not your current paladin,” Shiro amended. Black let the affronted tension fade, accepting his correction, but Shiro didn’t know how he felt about flying with her again. He couldn’t afford that thought, because right now Keith was her pilot. Right now they had to get to Earth. Right now his body still felt like a ship he piloted, foreign and not quite his own, and if he let himself think too long about any of that--

  
Shiro sighed and set the line of thought away. He didn’t know why he’d come in the first place, but maybe because he’d hoped Black’s presence would soothe those unspoken, jumbled worries. She’d helped before. She’d helped in the intangible expanse of Voltron’s mind. But here, sleepless again, on their way back to Earth, to the Garrison, to home?  
Shiro didn’t know how he felt.

  
He leaned his head back and closed his eyes again. Maybe he didn’t want to know how he felt right now. The metal beneath him still sapped his warmth. He’d left the blanket outside, and if he went back for it, he’d go back to the cave, back to pretending to sleep. And he didn’t mind a bit of cold here. It was Black, it was familiar and safe, grounding, no matter what was going on inside his head. This was still the Black Lion. He was still hers, even if not her pilot.

  
He let himself lean into the familiarity of her presence. The Black Lion leaned back, thoughts slowing with his. Her presence warmed him. Shiro could feel himself drifting, fading, and he saw no reason to stop it. He could always sleep here.

  
As he drifted to sleep, he dreamed of flying. And he didn’t stop himself.

**Author's Note:**

> HONESTLY I JUST WANT SHIRO TO BE HAPPY. AND HE AND BLACK WERE SO HAPPY FLYING TOGETHER. LIKE. I JUST  
> ;A;  
> This is my first VLD fic but hopefully not my last! I want to keep taking what I like about their canon and making it better. I tend to write short one-shots, so hopefully I'll be making more. But, mostly I just wanted to let Shiro miss being the Black Paladin. Bare minimum, I want him to get to miss things. Want things. Hope for things. Not just get shuttled unceremoniously from one part of his life to the next
> 
> So I'm going to let him here! Because I love writing him and his layers of Can't-Think-About-That-Rn and Gotta-Do-This-Thing, and his wry deadpan humor, and the way he lights up when faced with a good challenge (the food goo fight, the squishy asteroid fight, when the Lions joined the fight against Sendak above Earth)
> 
> I don't have much else to say, other than I hope you liked reading this as much as I liked writing it


End file.
